Davis Hillary - French Desserts

French
Desserts

Hillary Davis

Photographs by Steven Rothfeld

French Desserts

Digital Edition 1.0

Text 2016 Hillary Davis

Photographs 2016 Steven Rothfeld

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except brief portions quoted for purpose of review.

Gibbs Smith

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ISBN: 978-1-4236-4300-5

My passion for all things sweet began, as it does for most of us, in my childhood. My grandmother would take us into New York City to a restaurant that made the most incredible mile-high Southern caramel cake. I still dream about it. My father would make us Crpes Suzette if we asked him. The theatricality of it mesmerized us as he made it right at the table with a burner and copper skillet he bought in France just for the purpose of making the dish. He furthered the evolution of our taste for sweets by arriving home with boxes of baklava from a Greek bakery or with quarts of just-made vanilla ice cream from a local farm.

By age twelve, I was baking creamy rice puddings and making ice creams in our familys old hand-cranked ice cream maker with the sweet peaches from our trees. By the time I was a newlywed living in Paris, I had developed a recipe box full of handwritten cards of all the desserts I loved to make.

Years later when my husband and I returned to France to make it our home, I gained considerable knowledge about French desserts while living there for almost thirteen years, most of that time next door to a neighbor with a sweet tooth. Madame took me on a culinary tour of Frances sweets by tutoring me in her kitchen. She had grown up in Alsace, spent time in Dijon, and moved with her husband to the south of France, so her sweets reflected a wide range of regional specialties.

That sparked my interest in learning more about French cuisine and its deliriously delicious desserts. My husband and I traveled extensively throughout the country, and I was always stopping in local pastry shops to search out and sample things I was unfamiliar with, to explore desserts on bistro menus, and to collect recipes and techniques from people I met as I traveled. My dessert trail was filled with crumbs.

I learned that France has many regional desserts that are not found in other parts of the country, some of which date back centuries. Regional desserts, for the most part, reflect the area they are made in, just as any other dish on the table would. Normandy and Brittany are known for their excellent butter, cream, and milk, so their desserts are butter-centric, while in Provence you are less likely to find a rich, buttery dessert. Regional desserts also evolved because a town or area wanted to promote it for tourism or to protect it as a tradition. Many of the regional desserts I had never seen before in cookbooks, so for that reason, and because I fell in love with them, I made every effort to include them in this, my first dessert cookbook.

You will be delighted with the recipe for a , that have an orange marmalade heart.

What I learned over the many years I lived in France and from my extensive traveling throughout the country, is that French dessertsthe ones the French make in their homesare easy to make. Sophisticated pastries are a high art in France and with so many wonderful pastry shops within a short walk, the French simply buy them. They dont make them at home. What they do make at home are the desserts they grew up withsimple, homey comfort food desserts.

With my guidance you will be able to make them in your home kitchen, without fuss or intricate methods or special ingredients. To organize them, I divide each chapter, first into the recipes that are quicker to make, followed by the recipes that take longer to make. And, for the few fancier creations, I worked to demystify the magic of making them. For example, instead of presenting you with a traditional recipe for a millefeuille , a complicated and very popular pastry in France, I created one for you to make that is simpler than making cookies and is spectacular when brought to the table.

During a recent interview, a journalist asked me if there was a common theme between the four French cookbooks I have written, and I replied that there is. It is that I wanted to emphasize that French cooking is home cooking. The French go to fancy restaurants if they want fancy food, but for everyday dining, they celebrate simple food made at home, because they treasure their time at the table with family and friends, and they love to cook for them. Cooking and eating together is a ritual they honor. And the food they honor is the food their grandmother or mother made for themcasual rather than formal, free form rather than fussy.

A word about ingredients. Since the recipes in this book are for the most part based upon only a few ingredientsflour, butter, milk, eggs, and fresh fruit and berriesyou should do as the French do and use nothing but the best. Do this, and your desserts will be simply sensational.

I hope you have a great time with these recipes and that they will inspire you and acquaint you with the fabulous regional desserts of France.

Please feel free to email me with your questions or observations at hillarydavis@me.com, I look forward to hearing from you!

You can raise the level of your dessert making by living by one simple rule: use nothing but the best ingredients.

Other than fresh ingredients, stocking your pantry with essential items like the ones suggested below will give you the flexibility for spontaneous last-minute preparation of desserts without having to go out shopping.

Almond flour I always have bags of Bobs Red Mill almond flour and hazelnut flour around for making desserts. I love the texture and added flavor they provide compared to using ordinary flour, and they have the added benefit of allowing you to bake gluten free if you wish.

Almond Paste Almond paste is a mixture of almost equal parts of corn syrup or honey, ground almonds, confectioners sugar, and sometimes almond extract. You can find it in the baking section of most supermarkets. Marzipan, on the other hand, is only 1/3 ground almonds and the rest mostly sugar and is good for forming small candies because it is stiff and a bit dry.